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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25662550">The Retribution</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustSalPals/pseuds/JustSalPals'>JustSalPals</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dungeons &amp; Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons &amp; Dragons - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Original Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:21:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,403</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25662550</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustSalPals/pseuds/JustSalPals</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Retti had a complicated relationship with the concept of “self”. Well, maybe that wasn’t entirely true? It made sense for other people. The self was the self. Who you were as a person, what you wore, how you acted, how you touched the people in your life. For other people, that sort of thing made sense. Everything they were was their own. With Retti, it was more complicated.</p><p>Or: introspective pieces written for my D&amp;D character, The Retribution.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>SO, these probably don't make much sense without the context of the campaign? But a friend encouraged me to post these up here, so I thought "why not?" Just two really rambling and introspective pieces I wrote about my character.</p><p>For a bit of context: the campaign we're playing is in an ancient Greece-flavored world, where our party is a group of adventures chosen by the gods to stop the resurrection of the titans. Also known as the Fate Touched. My character is a dwarvish barbarian named Retti, which is short for The Retribution. She's what is called an "anvil born" in this world, which was a sword made with such passion and dedication that it had its own soul. The Retribution lived as a sword, an object, for four years protecting the woman she was forged for (who she affectionately refers to as "her soldier"). When her soldier's troop was attacked, somehow (she doesn't know how) the soul of the dwarf and her sword traded places. Retti accidentally took over the body of her soldier, and since then has been searching for a way to save the woman's trapped soul.</p><p>There's probably a lot of other missing context, but... *shrug*. If anyone actually stumbles across this, I'm happy to answer questions.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Retti had a complicated relationship with the concept of “self”. Well, maybe that wasn’t entirely true? It made sense for other people. The self was the self. Who you were as a person, what you wore, how you acted, how you touched the people in your life. For other people, that sort of thing made sense. Everything they were was their own. With Retti, it was more complicated. That’s what she thought, anyway. Sometimes she was wrong about this stuff. Sometimes she wrinkled up her nose in confusion at an idea, but to everyone else it was the simplest thing in the world. They had experience and context that she utterly lacked, painting the world in a different light.</p>
<p>It was hard not to let her mind wander back to that idea again, staring herself down in the mirror after a long day of Hyperium’s celebration. The self. Did she have one of those? Was she allowed to have a self when everything Retti could call her own was borrowed?</p>
<p>They’d changed her clothes for the festival. It was the right thing to do, setting aside their more recognizable attire for something clean and proper. She knew as much when Melody and Ioneus walked out in their own fine garb, but something about the change sat bitter and wrong in Retti’s gut. The vivid red fabric of robes fell flatteringly over her frame, hair pulled back into an impractically intricate braided bun, and none of it felt right. It was a betrayal to her solider, a departure from what was left behind. Something Retti was never allowed to have for herself.</p>
<p>Retti was a soul out of place, stuck in a body she didn’t belong in. To change anything about it was to betray Timoría even more so, tainting her body while the solider could do nothing to fix her mistakes. No, everything had to stay perfect for when Timoría was returned. Because she would return! She would be freed from her torturous prison soon enough, everything set back into their correct places. They had to be. Retti had been telling herself the same thing for two years now, because to do otherwise would be to admit the cruelty in her own heart that wished for something different.</p>
<p>The horrible, awful, selfish ideas that sometimes swirled inside her head when she was left alone with her thoughts. The fear sparked new and unfamiliar in the deepest pit of her ribcage, crawling up towards her esophagus like a suffocating inevitability. Retti liked being alive. No, liked was too weak of a word when compared to the terrifying alternatives. Her fingers brushed along the edge of a gleaming silver mask, tracing carefully along the artful engravings.</p>
<p>They called her Retribution. That’s not what she told them to call her, not what her true name was. Such a minor difference, such a simple thing to leave out, not nearly enough to bother correcting someone over. And yet it still stuck with her.</p>
<p>Her name was The Retribution. The. Leaving off one meaningless three letter word shouldn’t be enough to even register as a difference, and yet. Always with the and yet, wasn’t it? The “The” in her name felt so important because of its function. Because of the weight it carried. A simple article, signifying that it wasn’t a name that followed. Not even a title. An object. She was a weapon, a tool to be used, and that meant even her name was fundamentally different from that of a person’s. Even so, they didn’t speak it that way. They called her Retribution, as if her name meant the same thing to her that their own names meant to them. As if she was allowed to treasure her name as more than a meaningless word she’d been given.</p>
<p>Retti was a sword. She was a weapon to be held by someone worthy, to strike where she was pointed and not question the will of her wielder. Swords were not supposed to ask questions. But Retti did ask questions, didn’t she? They poured from her mouth unfiltered, struggling to understand the world with an undiminished wonder. Swords did not need to understand, Retti did not need to understand, but she wanted to anyway. Perhaps she really wasn’t a very good sword.</p>
<p>"Take this blade with you, and use it to cut down anyone who dares try and do you harm. Trust the sword and it will trust in you. No matter what happens, no matter how bleak the outcome may look, it will always protect you. It will bring you back to me safe." Her smith would be so disappointed to see what became of her finest work. To see what a failure it was, unable to accomplish the one thing she’d been forged to do. She couldn’t protect her soldier, she couldn’t protect Artys, she couldn’t stop Diotinos from leaving. Not a very good sword at all.<br/>The mask slid down from her face with only the slightest tug, allowing Retti to meet her own eyes in the reflective surface of the mirror. To meet Timoría’s eyes. She didn’t like to look in mirrors very much, lest she risk forgetting that the face looking back did not rightfully belong to her.</p>
<p>In a small moment of selfishness, Retti let herself imagine another body. Not her soldier’s stolen form, not a motionless prison of metal and blood, but something that could be entirely her own. Still a woman, she thinks. It’s taken her a long time to even vaguely understand the concept of gender, but she thinks that she likes being a woman. Whatever shape the body took, she would always be a she. If Retti got to pick though, she thinks that she’d like short hair. The braids were nice, but it got tiring to do them every morning and sometimes they swung past her face when she was trying to fight. The color didn’t matter so much. She’d fallen in love with every color that existed in this world, so surely whatever ended up on her head would be a fantastic shade.</p>
<p>Overtime she’d grown used to the squat frame of a dwarf, but she wouldn’t be opposed to a different race. Either way, she would like to be strong. Strength was important! Being able to heft the weight of a large club in her hands, taking the hard hits in place of her beloved friends, or even just wrapping her arms around someone in a firm sheltering hug. Yes, strength was important. Even if this new body wasn’t strong, Retti would do everything in her power to train into its fullest potential. Perhaps she could even train with Ioneus.</p>
<p>Because of course, this imagined body would always stay with the people most important to her. She would be by Ioneus and Melody’s sides for as long as they would have her, traveling and laughing and learning new things about the world every day. She would keep them safe, not as a sword but as their friend. Wasn’t that how they already saw her? They knew what she was, believed her every step of the way, but they never seemed to fully grasp what it meant to have been born an object. To never have been born at all. In this hypothetical world they wouldn’t need to know, because it would never matter. In years, or decades, or centuries, or however long people lived for (she always got different responses depending on who she asked), they would be sad when she died. Friends could be sad when people died.</p>
<p>They shouldn’t be sad when tools die. It wasn’t worth it. A sword can’t die, because it was never alive. It could never have a life of its own, besides what it stole thoughtlessly from it’s beloved solider. Everything Retti called herself was borrowed, and no number of imagined worlds would change that fact. But… Melody and Ioneus weren’t borrowed. They’d only ever known Retti as herself, and nothing in the world meant more to her than the fact that they stayed with her.</p>
<p>The Retribution was a sword, an object, a thing made for a purpose. But that’s not what the gods called her, was it? The gods looked down with their intense power and endless demands, they saw a foreign soul in a borrowed body, and they called her Retti. Like she had a name. Like she deserved to be a person. Like she was allowed to have a purpose besides fixing what she’d broken.<br/>Maybe the gods were as selfish and cruel as Retti was. With a sigh she set the mask to the side, quietly undoing the elegant dwarven bun to re-braid into Timoría’s usual simple pigtails. Not what would be her personal choice of hairstyle, but that had never been her choice to make in the first place.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When people ask Retti how old she is, she never knows what the right answer would be. Timoría’s body had been alive for a few decades before the swap, though Retti wasn’t sure on the exact number. It wasn’t something that they talked about. Retti herself had taken over the dwarf two years ago, finally able to interact with the world around her for the very first time. The furthest back she could remember was six years, when Klasina had first struck her hammer to metal and crafted something with every spark of passion in her heart.</p><p>It felt like a multiple-choice question with no right answers. She tried to explain this to them, make them understand why she didn’t know, and their eyebrows drew together in that same pinched confusion. Usually when strangers asked her now, Retti just said “debatable.” It was easier. It was the truth. They still gave her that same look, but usually if she talked fast enough they wouldn’t care to return to that initial subject. Retti was pretty good at that, she thought. Bulldozing through conversation was a skill she honed on accident.</p><p>Six years was probably the most accurate, but that never quite seemed like the right answer. Most of the six-year-olds Retti had met were children, and she’d never once been a child in her life. She wasn’t sure if she was capable of being a child. Her soul came into this world once piece at a time, burning with the heat of fire and the violent pulse of hammer against anvil. Children were a work in progress, still letting themselves be shaped and sharpened by environment around them. Retti had always been a fully formed being, struggling to find the context of a world everyone else knew so easily.</p><p>She wishes that she remembered her smith better. There were bits and pieces (a soft smile, a determined scowl, the calloused hands that sharpened Retti with deadly promise turned gentle and hesitant as she gifted the blade to Timoría), but she hadn’t spent a very long time in the mountain before they left for Kryta. Most of what she knows of Klasina was from her solider, whispered in the dead of night when they were alone. The nights were her favorite time, when Timoría sat at the edge of camp for her turn on watch duty. She would sit in the quiet with The Retribution sheathed across her lap, filling the air with along strings of dwarvish. Sometimes she’d talk about her day, or old stories from the valley back home.</p><p>She talked about Klasina a lot. Timoría would roll a grape between her fingers and laugh, painting wistful pictures with her words of their days as children. As time passed and The Retribution learned the shape of emotion, she thought that there might have been regret in her soldier’s voice. The things she’d never said back then seemed to hurt her far more than the things she had. The Retribution tried very hard, but she didn’t quite understand. If there was something to say, why not say it? If keeping the words inside hurt so badly, surely it only served to make things worse. A sword couldn’t talk at all, and some days it hurt more than she knew how to handle. If The Retribution had the luxury of words, she wasn’t sure that she would ever stop talking at all.</p><p>At least Timoría said them now, even if there was no one to listen but a lifeless weapon. The Retribution didn’t know if her soldier realized someone was listening, but she liked to think Timoría knew she wasn’t alone. That some part of her, no matter how illogical, trusted that Klasina had sent her off with a guardian to bring her back home safe.</p><p>In all the fog of her time as a sword, those nights are what she remembered the best. Long rambling stories and meaningless talk, watching her solider roll dice alone by the smoldering remains of a fire. Those were the moments she chose to hold onto, when she thought back on their time together.</p><p>The rest wasn’t nearly so pleasant. Days blended together meaninglessly, backlit by heavy footfall and blood against metal. An object didn’t get the privilege of knowing life. She’d learned what death tasted like before she knew her first breath of oxygen, knowing nothing but the determination to protect her solider. There was something else too, something always present, always lingering unseen in her soul with a silent scream. But The Retribution didn’t have the word for it just yet.</p><p>When she opened her eyes for the first time, feeling the scratch of dirt against her new skin and the dull ache of a fatal wound healed over, she somehow found the word among the hazy surprise of circumstance. Pain, she realized as she stumbled to her feet (no, to her soldier’s feet). The Retribution had been in pain for the last four years. Corpses of the enemy littered the ground, her soldier’s troop nowhere to be seen, but her eyes only saw one thing among the grime and blood. There on the ground, pulsing with the faint trace of magic, was a familiar hilt with now broken blade.</p><p>She knew that sword like she knew her own heart. She knew her soldier like she knew the screams of man when you slice into their flesh. The Retribution reached out desperately, as if she could grab Timoría’s soul with clumsy fingers and shove it back where it belonged. As if she could fix this situation with the hands of a mere mortal. Instead, unused to having a body at all, she toppled over her own feet and collided again with the ground. A sword lay in the dust of an abandoned battle, and she cried for the life of the woman she’d been created to protect.</p><p>If her sobs turned to manic laughter, alone among the corpses and covered in blood… The Retribution didn’t like to think about that. She didn’t like to think about the joy mixing with the horror, pulling in deep gasps of air just to feel the miracle of it within her lungs. She didn’t want to be that kind of monster.</p><p>Even though she knows that’s exactly what she is.</p><p>So she kept moving. She picked up the sword that she had once been with too careful hands, trying to wrap it away with the same gentle touch that Timoría always showed her. The Retribution’s motions were clumsy, inexperienced, but she mimicked what she’d seen and hoped that her soldier would appreciate it as she had. That was the trick to humanity, she was soon to discover. They seemed to like it when you mimicked them, even if you didn’t understand what it was that you were repeating back.</p><p>The Retribution stood on two legs that were not her own, she washed away the blood that had seeped into her soldier’s dress, and she searched for a way to set things right. She told herself she was searching. She was. Wasn’t she? But how was she supposed to find a solution if she knew nothing about the world? It was her duty to learn about life, so she could properly start her journey to save Timoría. What was the problem if she happened to have fun on the way?</p><p>Perhaps that had been her biggest sin after stealing away her soldier’s body. Learning what fun was. The Retribution learned about the loud laughter found in taverns, the incomparable adrenaline of a battle, the natural stretch of her mouth into a carefree grin. She liked that word. Carefree. No care, no troubling memories, no tortured friends trapped under layers of blood and metal. Just the warm heat of dragon spice tingling in her brain, and the friendly pat of stranger’s hand on her back as they talked late into the night.</p><p>It was two months into her new life when she’d first been called Retti. The man was drunk out of his mind and barely paying attention to her words, but he was really pretty and said such nice things to her. The Retribution was fairly sure he’d just misheard her introduction, but she didn’t correct him. She liked the way it sounded on his lips, grinning at her over half-empty mug of grog. Retti. It was a nice name. The kind a real person might have.</p><p>She told herself that she kept using it because it made things easier. Because the looks she got introducing herself as Retti were far more welcoming, compared to the confused wariness that always came with The Retribution. Deep down, she knew that wasn’t her real reason. Retti liked the way it felt, to pretend she had a name of her very own. She liked it the same way she liked the sharp burn of grog like gasoline in her throat, like she liked the smiles of strangers in the dead of night, or learning all the different colors that the sky could make.</p><p>Time went on, and she kept moving. She kept smiling. She asked less people if they knew how to fix a shattered soul. It took her a long time to understand money as a concept, but it wasn’t too hard to find lodging for the night. If there was no one eager to share their bed, Retti had gotten pretty good at scaling a tree to get a good night’s rest. She hadn’t quite nailed waking up gracefully in the branches, but a little fall to earth wasn’t going to kill her.</p><p>Once, a concerned barkeep asked Retti if she needed a change of clothes. Her dress was worn and tattered around her legs, and the bright Krytan red of her cape showed the distress of many battles fought alone. Retti turned down the offer with a wave, not knowing how to string her whirlwind of thoughts together into words. It would be wrong. The dress was Timoría’s, just like the dwarven braids of her red hair and the clean trim of her beard. They weren’t hers to get rid of.</p><p>To dress differently was to claim this body as her own, and Retti refused to let herself be that cruel. When her soldier returned, things would be just as she had left them.</p><p>It’s funny, how easy it is to make excuses when you’re able to claim ignorance. Retti didn’t know how to save her soldier, didn’t even know where to start, so this was fine. She wasn’t a monster for living in the meantime. What else was she supposed to do? It was fine, as long as she didn’t let herself get too comfortable in one place. If she didn’t tie herself down too firmly, she could make as many connections as she wanted. She could have so many friends, as long as they didn’t like her enough be sad when she was gone. She could like people all she wanted, but to let them like her back would be cruel. Retti grew used to one-sided affections.</p><p>And then there was Dio, with roaring laughter and leering smiles. And then there was Artys, with dreams of gods and far too much patience. Then there was Ioneus, with kind scowls and skilled trident. Then there was Melody, with enchanting song and deadly whisper. She loved them. Retti loved them with each pulse of a heart that wasn’t her own, trapped in the stolen cage of her chest. She loved them like she loved her solider, suffering because Retti had failed to protect her. Because Retti was a bad sword.</p><p>She wouldn’t fail her new friends. She would never fail again.</p><p>But she did. For all her determination, Retti kept failing the people she loved. She kept watching from the sidelines as they got hurt.</p><p>Artys was first, taken from them in the silence of night. No warning, no goodbyes, just an unmoving figure of clay where a dwarven man once sat. Retti didn’t understand the gods very well, but she was beginning to think that she didn’t like them. Thessa had sent him to find the four others centuries ago, before most were even born, and the moment they first truly came together over the body of a chimera? She took him from them. For the short time that they’d spent together, Retti wished that she’d gotten the chance to know more about him. She knew he was kind and patient, but refused to take any shit on the battlefield. She knew the clever little doggy that lived in his shadow, remembered the softness of Bri’s fur under her nails. She knew that he traveled with Ioneus for forty years. Gods, she wished now more than anything that she’d asked more about that time. She wished there was someone left who remembered, instead of letting four whole decades be lost to the winds.</p><p>But then Arty was gone. No battle, no enemy to fight off, just taken from them when the party dared closed their eyes for a rest.</p><p>Then there was Diotinos. Retti wished she knew what happened to Dio. Wished that she’d been smart enough to understand when the hags offered their mocking explanation. What Retti knew was this: Dio was her friend. Dio had bought her a drink and slung an arm around her shoulder. Dio filled her eager ears with new knowledge about the world, even if his facts sometimes didn’t line up with what else she’d come to know. And then he was gone. Not taken by death, as Arty had been. Just gone. They’d woken up to find his belongings gone and the man nowhere to be seen.</p><p>Melody and Ioneus hadn’t been too broken up about it. Retti had dug her fingers into her skirts and tried to pretend the same. After all they’d been through, all the crowded taverns and heated battle, why had he left? Why hadn’t he said goodbye? Retti had learned the hard way she wasn’t a very good sword. She was starting to worry she wasn’t a very good friend either.</p><p>It was alright. Retti still had her club and her dice. She had Ioneus and Melody. Retti sat on the floor of the oracle’s chamber, letting dice clatter to the floor as she taught Ioneus the rules to Death Yahtzee, and she decided not to think about it too much. They had two quiet weeks to stew in the city, the longest she’d ever been in one place, and the restlessness crawled under her skin like wiggling bugs. Retti hadn’t slept on a mattress this many nights in a row since… ever. This was new. Retti had a bed, a mission, friends she cared about, and that was so so so dangerous. She was starting to feel like a person.</p><p>She wasn’t supposed to feel like that. She wasn’t allowed.</p><p>Retti paid extra attention when she did her braids in the morning, forcing herself to look at her reflection in the mirror. This is not your face, she reminded herself. This is not your breath to treasure, not your life to love. The braids swung in front of Retti’s face when she slammed down her club, and the overwhelming temptation arose to chop off the tresses at the root. She didn’t. It wasn’t her hair to cut.</p><p>Three new fate chosen walked into their lives, and Retti tried to pretend the rocks in her stomach didn’t taste so bitter. She tried not to dwell on how easily the gods swapped out their chosen for a handful more, so unconcerned with the ends of her dear friends. Retti grit her teeth and clenched her fists, finding that with every passing day she liked the gods less and less.</p><p>But she loved knowing new people, and what happened after the chimera wasn’t their fault. They didn’t know. She reached out her hands to three strangers, feeling her grin easily become genuine again as they reached back out to her. Des, with nervous eyes and studios shyness. Mezza, with large form and the promise of friendship painted across his chest. Liana, grinning ear to ear as she punched Retti right in the jaw. They didn’t fill the holes left behind, but they settled warm next to the gaps into her chest all the same. Maybe it would still be alright. Maybe she could protect these friends.</p><p>Or maybe Retti had always been better at hurting than protecting.</p><p>When she closes her eyes, every moment of failure flickers through Retti’s mind. She can remember a furious Melody and fear painted Des’ face as Retti pulled the flickering essence of life from their bodies. She remembers Ioneus jumping to her defense when the hags goaded her, nearly getting himself killed because Retti was too stupid to leave. She remembers Liana’s limp form tossed into the flames.</p><p>The hags had called her worthless. Sitting on the ship after, feeling the spray of sea water against her face, Retti turned the word over in her mind. They were right. Retti had nothing of worth that could really be called her own. She hadn’t dared let herself. Retti hadn’t wanted to leave things behind when her time came, and her solider had returned to her body once again. The clothes on her back, the hair on her head, the life beating in her chest. None of them were Retti’s to give up. She hugged her knees to her chest, feeling the rocking of the boat and the light pinching of Melody’s lobster claws on her skirt, and Retti felt like her heart had been ripped from her soldier’s chest. She kept her sniffling tears quiet, mourning the emptiness of a life she treasured so dearly.</p><p>She had offered them two years. Her only two years, the one thing was truly her own, and they called it worthless. Two years of wandering around, avoiding responsibility and letting the soldier she claimed to love suffer. Would it not have been kinder to toss her blade into the fire? At least in death she wouldn’t lead a fractured and agonizing existence, waiting for the day Retti would stop dragging out her pain. </p><p>When she asked for advice on her circumstance, people always gave Retti conflicting information. You’re doing the right thing, they told her. To let Timoría suffer would be cruel, even if only ruin awaited Retti down the path to her rescue. And yet in the same breath they claimed it is not selfish to want to live. She wished that they would pick one. Was Retti cruel and selfish, or wasn’t she? Should she be ashamed of her life or not?</p><p>Retti cried a lot on that boat, taking care of a lobster and hiding away from her friends. She cried for herself. She cried for Liana, so bright even at the end when the hags tore her down. She cried for Ioneus, unaware of just how much he had lost on the islands. She cried for Des, who had sold away her freedom while Retti stood there and watched like the idiot she was.</p><p>There, in the rocking waves, Retti finally thought that she understood. She couldn’t protect anyone. Everyone she loved would be hurt, and maybe it was cruel of her to love anyone at all. Perhaps Retti was a naturally cruel soul, as she kept on loving anyway.</p><p>They docked back in Illyria, and Retti did her best to keep busy. There were things to do, routes to map, keys to find. Des was upset. Of course Des was upset. How could she not be upset? Retti wanted to reach out to her, to share her pain, to stew in their loss together until the world turned numb and they remembered how pretty the night sky shone overhead. She wished she knew how to mourn. Melody said that she would need time, need space, so Retti bit her tongue did as she always had. She closed her eyes and trusted her friends to lead the way.</p><p>She didn’t tell anyone, but sometimes Retti thought that she liked Ionues the best. Des and Melody were wonderful, but sometimes their expression grate against Retti the wrong way. Their eyes were a bit too soft, the curve of their lips pitying, the light shake of their heads when Retti got confused (because of course Retti got confused again). They meant well, but sometimes it felt like they treated her like a child. They took her ignorance as a constant fact rather than a variable in flux. They glossed over explanation because Retti won’t get it anyway, so why bother? There was no time to explain, and it’s not like Retti wanted to learn anyway.</p><p>She did want to learn. Retti wanted to learn so badly it felt like a sharp pit in her stomach, calling out in ravenous hunger. Her heart leapt into her throat when Des offered to teach her to read, but Retti held herself back with a steady breath and a casual shrug. As she knew from long nights learning Common and Dwarvish, language took time and effort. They had so many things to do, Des especially, rather than be wasting on teaching Retti how to read. She wanted, she really did, but… When she spoke up, she got the feeling that Des hadn’t really ever expected her to accept. Later that same day, when the wizard calmly claimed that education wasn’t nearly so important to any of them as it was to her… it hurt. It stung.</p><p>Did Des not see how badly she was trying to learn?</p><p>Sometimes Retti felt like Melody kept secrets. She felt awful for even considering it, but it was in her sly side-stepping and colorful illusion. Sometimes it felt like Melody didn’t trust Retti not to hand over their secrets and precious objects to the first person with a pretty smile. Maybe she was right to think that.</p><p>But if one of them explained it to her, told her how important it was that no one else got the item, Retti would understand. She knew how important it was to keep treasured things safe, the carefully wrapped broken blade her living proof. Sometimes you had to explain things to Retti, but you could explain them. She needed them to explain. She didn’t have the context they did, laying out a million unspoken rules to the world that Retti never had gotten the chance to learn.</p><p>That’s why she liked Ioneus the best. He was patient with her, but never patronizing. He explained things in a to-the-point matter, but that bluntness was utterly refreshing compared to searching helplessly for meaning in metaphor. The fact he claimed people didn’t like him was the most baffling thing in the world to Retti. She’d thought that she was dumb, but there were some real idiots out there if they didn’t see how great Ioneus was. </p><p>Crixos groaned beneath their feet, and Retti hoped that she’d come to love their newest companions as well. Atlanta, with skin like water and careful words. Persephone, clinking their glasses of wine together over the birth of a new friendship.</p><p>Maybe she had been waiting a bit longer than usual to tell them a sword. Maybe she wanted them to think she was a real person a little bit longer. Maybe she wanted to pretend.</p><p>Retti liked them. She wanted to protect them.</p><p>Given her track record, that was truly a cruel decision on Retti’s part.</p>
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